What is more special than a couple finding love? To cherish each other forevermore?To share in the highs and lows of a relationship?

To find love in a paranormal way.

Admit it. The paranormal can be hot and delicious and sexy. The romance can pull us out of the ordinary and place us in the extraordinary. We can fantasize about just how hot a vampire or a werewolf or a jaguar shifter could be.

We can love them, knowing they will love us with a passion no mortal man can give us. Well, some can, but it’s like having a super-being making love to us. Not all powerful, but he’s just, well, out of the ordinary.

And yet, they’re human, too. Sharing the human emotions of sorrow and grief and doubt and fear. In fact, I believe they feel these things in an extraordinary way. They’re not bound by human convention. They can be who they are (well, within reason…a werewolf has to be careful about shifting in a room full of humans, and a vampire living in a society that believes they’re only fantasy has to be careful about showing off his gorgeous pearly whites), but in other ways, they can be real men…in a bigger than life PARA normal way.

So what’s not to love? Just because a guy’s got to run in a fur coat sometimes, or a spotted coat on occasion, or take a little nip at the pulse in your neck, doesn’t mean they can’t be human most other times. And yet that part of them, the paranormal side of them, reflects in their human lives, the way their senses are more highly attuned, the way they can perceive more than mortal men can see, the way they can be more protective and better equipped to act on that protectiveness than a strictly human counterpart. Because they do have those overprotective genes, and abilities that will help them ensure they are there to see that no one else takes advantage of the woman they love, they make a pretty terrific mate. That doesn’t mean that the woman won’t be called upon to rescue a hero in trouble.

The guys are still half human. And even wolves or jaguars or vampires can get themselves into hot water. So sometimes those spunky heroines who ally themselves with them have to help them out.

Not all heroines are the totally human type either. Some are just as paranormal as the guys. (Heart of the Wolf, book 1, Destiny of the Wolf, book 2, Seduced by the Wolf, book 5, Heart of the Highland Wolf, book 7) And sometimes the guys don’t have a paranormal bone in their body, and it’s the women who have the advantage. Hmm-hmm. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

Not that a strictly human woman can’t throw a paranormal type dude totally off kilter, making him wonder just how he got so deeply involved with someone he shouldn’t. Jake Silver in Dreaming of the Wolf (book 8) comes to mind when he runs into Alicia Greiston, bounty hunter, human type, when he’s strictly all wolf. (To Tempt the Wolf, book 3, Wolf Fever, book 6).

It isn’t that a human is less worthy of having a mate who isn’t all human, but it just gets…complicated. But what if neither are paranormal to begin with? More trouble than they bargain for. Especially when the human couple have to face the paranormal changes and haven’t a clue as to what’s happening. (Legend of the White Wolf, book 4).

Then there are the vampire hunters and the vampires. No way does a huntress of vampires ever want to be one of the hunted. Not that one would take up with a renegade vampire, but still…they’re not acceptable mates whether they’re the good guys or not. Normally. Unless the love bug bites, and then…well, it’s something they have to deal with. (Deadly Liaisons, Huntress for Hire, Forbidden Love, Seducing the Huntress, The Siren’s Lure, Vampiric Calling).

What about the jaguar shifters? Well, the first has to do with a jaguar shifter, his sister, and a human woman who keeps intruding on his life. And he’s falling hard for her. But being the paranormal kind of guy he is, heroic to a fault, no way is he changing her. (Jaguar, book 1, Fall 2012).

Award-winning author Terry Spear is the author of urban fantasy romances and medieval Highland romances. She received Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the Year in 2008 for Heart of the Wolf. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry is a librarian by day. She lives in Crawford, Texas.

31 comments:

Hi Terry! I'm so excited that Chelsea has introduced me to a new to me author - and it's to a writer that does shapeshifters, and lots of them are WOLVES!! YAY! I am now stalking you through all social networks so I can follow your work =)As for your question, sometimes I do love love when a shapeshifter falls in love with a simple human. The reader gets to feel a whole new complexity of emotions as the human learns to deal with something that is unnatural to them, and there is typically additional sensitivity and protectiveness on the shapeshifters part as they introduce their human into their way of life. It just breaks up the usual read ;)Thank you so much for the giveaway! If I were to win, I would choose the first in your wolf series, Heart of the Wolf, so I could begin at the beginning, of course, lol.

"Oh, and what do you think of a paranormal gal who targets a hunk of a guy—human kind—for her own? Or do you prefer it the other way around, when one of them is human?"

hmm I recently came across the paranormal guy going after the human guy (Immortal Rider) and I didn't mind it because the hero was extremely strong for a human, if he was weaker than the heroine, I think it would totally bug me.. I normally don't mind if one of them is human but if its a long lived species/vampires etc then I expect whoever is human not to remain human forever because how else would they stay with their new lover/love? ;)

If one person is a shifter and the other is human, I like for the guy to be the furry one. There's just something SO SEXY about male shape shifters, even if they're not the "alphas". To be honest, though, I've got quite a fondness for when BOTH hero and heroine are shifters - it adds an interesting dynamic.

I admit it, I'm a vampire junkie. (Blame Spike, it's all his fault — And he SHOULD have had a happy ending with Buffy!) I like seeing a couple that is either both paranormal or one is and the other isn't. Both provide their own forms of conflict, and seeing how an author weaves that story together is what makes me so interested in reading romances. :)

Hi, Gena! Thanks for getting interested in the wolf series! Hope you get a chance to read them! And fall in love!

Thanks, Chelsea, for having me here today! It's a sad story, but my son gave me a new rebuilt computer for Christmas, but before I ran to work Monday morning when I normally let the world know where I am for the day, I realized he'd done something with my flash drive, which is where I have my blog tour schedule. Then my monitor died on me and I had to run out after work and get a new one. And I didn't get a google alert that I was here Monday. And I was on on another guest blog on Monday, so I thought that was it. Then I got your email, and that was way late because I was visiting with my family who are all in from other places either in Texas or from Pensacola. So I'm thrilled you got the word out without me and I'm so sorry that I didn't help out or come by until now! I'll post about it today though!!! Thanks again, Chelsea!

Tamara, I like when they're both not human, or a human and non-human. Or in the one case, neither are human to begin with. In a long running series that are stand-alone titles, it's important to have different situations so that we're not writing the same story over and over again, and just changing the characters' names. :)

Thanks, Candice!

Jess, I tend to agree. I like the furry creature to be the guy if they're both not human. Like I said with Tamara, I need to vary my story lines, and I haven't done one with a male who is human and the woman who is a shifter, except in a scifi romance I wrote where the woman is a panther shifter, her brother, a dragon, and the hero is a fighter pilot. So I might have to do a wolf shifter story like that, just to have variation on a theme.

Just finished Highland Wolf and I LOVED it, but then I knew I would, your on my top ten list for a reason!!! Anyways...I can't wait for your jaguar series, and figured I might as well enter for one of the books I HAVEN'T read, which would either be 'Legend of the White Wolf', or 'To Tempt the Wolf'. Good luck to everyone!!!!

Thanks, Cassandra!! Legend of the White Wolf is a pack all its own, for good reason. I haven't written a sequel, but would like to. To Tempt the Wolf is about the Oregon Coast wolf pack that Hunter runs. He's a Navy SEAL. And then comes A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing in March. :) That one is about his sister, who was always on the lookout for a mate. She's met her match in Finn. Thanks again!

Hi Terry!!! So glad you made it! I figured something had come up so I wasn't too worried about it! That kind of stinks on your flash drive and then your monitor going out! I hate when my monitors go out, hasn't happened too often but it can be so frustrating when everything that can go wrong goes wrong :) Hopefully since your docs seem to not have all your tours that some of them will email you too LOL I can just imagine the guessing game for that! Guess we'll leave this open today so you can get some more fans to come say hi :) So no worries hon! I just saw it was scheduled for today so I just posted it around 10am when I woke up and it worked out nice either way :)

The Jaguar series sounds awesome :) I love all shifter stories but there's something sexy about cats,panthers/jaguars though I haven't seen too many of those for cat shifters so that should be a unique one :)

Thanks for coming over with us today and hanging out :) Lots of Shifter fans *grins*

Terry, its really no problem at all! its the holidays and 2 days after Xmas, I'd be a real Grinch if I couldn't be understanding LOL! I do have a 7 year old to help with my patience though *grins* And Toni was a super rock star and anything you see changed from the original is all because of her... she's amazing :) I like super suck at HTML so I'm really lucky she's willing to run it/tweek stuff with me :) hehe! LOL a picture of like a Jag cat inside a Jag car? That would be extremely interesting :P maybe one day I'll try to draw you one *grins*

Terry and Chelsea, thank you SO much for not only letting me enter your fun contest, but for picking me as your winner this time around! I'm just bowled over and so thrilled! *HAPPY DANCE!!* I love my werewolves SO much (today the werewolf side of the Gemini twin is in charge, so I chose Destiny of the Wolf), tee hee!(((HUGS - BIG SQUISHY ONES)))Thank you !!!!Gena Robertsonrobertsongena@hotmail.com